Boundary conditions of the politeness effect in online mathematical learning

Abstract

Higher mathematics is an obligatory subject for most students at technical universities and is especially difficult to understand. Many multimedia studies have shown that politeness in instructions and feedback can enhance learning outcomes. Thus, this study aimed to investigate if politeness could improve the learning performance of students in an online mathematics course that was presented within a year. In our experiment, 277 students were randomly assigned to a 2 (politeness in instructions; polite vs. direct) × 2 (politeness in feedback; polite vs. direct) factorial between-subjects design. The learning material consisted of four chapters of higher mathematics and four post-tests. Unexpectedly, politeness in instructions did not influence the results. Furthermore, groups receiving polite feedback spent more time on the exercises in the chapters and achieved higher scores in chapters and post-tests. In sum, politeness in feedback influenced learning positively, but politeness in instructions did not have any influence.